III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

I. Our EarthMost Distinction: A Rare Planetary Confluence of Favorable Conditions for Life in Person

Calder, Nigel. Spaceships of the Mind. New York: Viking, 1978. As I revise some four decades later in 2021, the British science communicator presciently considers the post-Copernican options of an alien, moribund universe (which has lately become an epitaph) or one which innately grows in vital cognizant knowledge and galactic civilizations by way of the cocreative activity of aware, intelligent beings.

In talking with scientists about the human niche within the vast and ancient universe revealed by modern astronomy, I detected very different kinds of ‘intuitive feelings about nature.’ Some saw us diminished: all we could do was try to snatch a little dignity in cultivating our planet, and draw a little pride and rationality from our understanding of the universe. Another feeling reflected strongly in this book, was that human beings had the collective knowledge and skill to start transforming the universe to their own purposes. (13)

Canales, Manuel, et al. One Strange Rock. National Geographic. March, 2017. As a companion article for a 10 part TV series with this title, senior editors MC and Matthew Chwastyk and science writer Eve Conant compile a list of thirteen reasons why this Earth, upon which a planetary sapience has evolved able to do this, appears to be the successful outcome of many especially fortuitous astronomic, geologic, and biotic conditions and event.

Earth is well equipped as a planet and ideally placed in our solar system and galaxy to support life as we know it. The product of some 4.6 billion years of cosmic construction, oru planet is flush with life thanks to a fortuitous set of conditions, from the optimal chemical makeup of our planetary core to our safe distance from the hidden black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Thirteen Reasons: 1. Our planet recycles life-friendly carbon over time, 2. We have an ozone layer to block harmful rays, 3.We have a big moon to stabilize our axial wobble, 4. Earth’s varied surfaces support many life-forms, 5. Our magnetic field deflects solar tempests, 6. We’re at just the right distance from the sun, 7. We’re situated safely away from gas giants, 8.The sun is a stable, long-lasting star, 9. Wehave the right stuff to host a dynamic core, 10. We have Giant planets that protect us from afar, 11. Our sun offers protection from galactic debris, 12. Our galactic path steers us clear of hazards, and 13. Our location is far from stellar crowds.

Canup, Robin, et al. Origin of the Moon. arXiv:2103.02015. Eleven astro-researchers based in Colorado, Texas, California, Illinois, New York and the Czech Republic gather and discuss the latest global findings about how the especially suitable satellite that graces our night skies came to form so neatly where it best belongs. Its presence has been a vital part of early conditions which helped get life going on its way to our curious selves.

The Earth-Moon system is unusual in several respects. The Moon is roughly 1/4 the radius of the Earth - a larger satellite-to-planet size ratio than all known satellites other than Pluto's Charon. The Moon has a tiny core, perhaps with only ~1% of its mass, in contrast to Earth whose core contains nearly 30% of its mass. The Earth-Moon system has a high total angular momentum, implying a rapidly spinning Earth when the Moon formed. In addition, the early Moon was hot and at least partially molten with a deep magma ocean. Identification of a model for lunar origin that can satisfactorily explain all of these features has been the focus of decades of research. (Abstract excerpt)

Carlisle, Camille. Cosmic Collisions. Sky & Telescope. December, 2012. Into this 21st century what vistas have earthlings come to, what are we risen mortals altogether capable of. This article suggests that it may amazingly be possible to detect signs of other, intermeshing universes by finessing data findings from the CMB and WMAP satellites. Might we then imagine that valiant human beings have something to do with the success or failure of the entire cosmos, if by common vision, we could so witness and self-select?

Chopra, Aditya and Charles Lineweaver. The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck: The Biology of Habitability. International Journal of Astrobiology. 16/1, 2016. If one pays attention to current findings in the scientific literature, as this website tries to report, in the past few years the cosmic nexus of our Earthly abode has attained a special statue. Planetary systems with well spaced circular orbits, all in the same plane, a rare location of outer gas giants, a stable, long duration galaxy, and a large moon, are now known as quite rare. This paper by Australian Natural University astrophysicists now adds a temporal evolutionary constraint. While biochemical, microbial life appears wherever possible, an ability to reach complex, multicellular stages is seen to require an early formation of a conducive, self-regulating atmosphere. If this does not happen, simpler life forms are extinguished by hostile conditions, the candidate bioworld becomes barren. Even if the emergence of life is a common feature of wet rocky planets throughout the Universe, the Gaian bottleneck model suggests that inhabited Earth-like planets would be rare.

The prerequisites and ingredients for life seem to be abundantly available in the Universe. However, the Universe does not seem to be teeming with life. The most common explanation for this is a low probability for the emergence of life (an emergence bottleneck), notionally due to the intricacies of the molecular recipe. Here, we present an alternative Gaian bottleneck explanation: If life emerges on a planet, it only rarely evolves quickly enough to regulate greenhouse gases and albedo, thereby maintaining surface temperatures compatible with liquid water and habitability. Such a Gaian bottleneck suggests that (i) extinction is the cosmic default for most life that has ever emerged on the surfaces of wet rocky planets in the Universe and (ii) rocky planets need to be inhabited to remain habitable. In the Gaian bottleneck model, the maintenance of planetary habitability is a property more associated with an unusually rapid evolution of biological regulation of surface volatiles than with the luminosity and distance to the host star. (Abstract)

Cirkovic, Milan. Earths: Rare in Time, not Space? Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 57/1-2, 2004. In attempt to move beyond the Rare Earth hypothesis, the Belgrade astronomer enlists a temporal factor whereby the Milky Way galaxy may be at the verge of a Phase Transition from a sparsely populated mode to being filled with centers of intentional intelligence. The present galactic moment is a “window of opportunity” when sentient observers may engage in their own “self-selection.”

The latter hypothesis (PT) suggests that our presence on Earth now selects a particular (and rather special) epoch of the history of the Milky Way: namely the epoch in which global regulation enables the emergence of complex, intelligent life forms. (57) However, our temporal location is rather special, since we are evolved complex metazoans on the verge – in terms of astrophysical timescales – of having capacities to leave our home biosphere and embark on the venture of Galactic colonization. (57)

Cirkovic, Milan. Kardashev’s Classification at 50+: A Fine Vehicle with Room for Improvement. arXiv:1601.05112. The Belgrade Astronomical Observatory astronomer and author (search) reviews the Russian futurist’s original three forms that a technological cosmic center of life might accrue as it takes over planetary, solar and galactic energy sources. His conjectures do stand the test of time, to which may now be added a universe scale, and even onto mutliverse reaches.

We review the history and status of the famous classification of extraterrestrial civilizations given by the great Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Semenovich Kardashev (1932- ), roughly half a century after it has been proposed. While Kardashev's classification (or Kardashev's scale) has often been seen as oversimplified, and multiple improvements, refinements, and alternatives to it have been suggested, it is still one of the major tools for serious theoretical investigation of SETI issues. During these 50+ years, several attempts at modifying or reforming the classification have been made; we review some of them here, together with presenting some of the scenarios which present difficulties to the standard version. Recent results in both theoretical and observational SETI studies, especially the G-hat infrared survey (2014-2015), have persuasively shown that the emphasis on detectability inherent in Kardashev's classification obtains new significance and freshness. Several new movements and conceptual frameworks, such as the Dysonian SETI, tally extremely well with these developments. (Abstract)

Cirkovic, Milan. The Great Silence: Science and Philosophy of Fermi’s Paradox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. The Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University astrophysicist and author (search) provides a thorough study of possible answers to Enrico Fermi’s famous query: with an infinity of suns and assumed worlds, the cosmos ought to be filled with signs of their presence, but they are nowhere to be seen. Thus follows an eclectic list of solipsist, rare-earth, neo-catastrophic, logistic, and so on guesses – they are hiding, we are toxic, it’s a zoo, too many natural or viral dangers, stick with your home base, arrested development, technological annihilation and more. A theme then courses through – while a “Copernican principle” need be held to such that Earth is not in any central location, a closing phrase is Many are called, but few are chosen. Since Earth life has made it through an evolutionary “Gaian Window,” maybe we are special after all (I may be reading this in) so that efforts to achieve sustainability ought to proceed. See also Where is Everybody? by Stephen Webb (2015), /The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku (2018) and On the Future by Martin Rees (2018) for other takes. So some seven decades later, as an Earthropic Principle conveys, me + We = US could well be the It from Bit as participatory cosmic cocreators.

The Great Silence explores the multifaceted problem named after the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his legendary 1950 lunchtime question "Where is everybody?" In many respects, Fermi's paradox is the richest and the most challenging problem for the entire field of astrobiology and the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies. The book shows how Fermi's paradox is intricately connected with many fields of learning, technology, arts, and even everyday life. It aims to establish the strongest possible version of the problem, to dispel many related confusions, obfuscations, and prejudices, as well as to offer a novel point of entry to the many solutions proposed in existing literature. Milan Cirković argues that any evolutionary worldview cannot avoid resolving the Great Silence problem in one guise or another. (Publisher)

Cirkovic, Milan and Branislav Vukotic. Astrobiological Landscape: A Platform for the Neo-Copernican Synthesis? International Journal of Astrobiology. Online October, 2012. As the Abstract explains, Belgrade astronomers draw upon many findings that imply an abiding lively cosmos which inherently seeds itself with complexifying biomolecules, habitable zones, and myriad fertile exoearths. In regard, it is proposed to extend biology’s evolutionary or fitness landscape models to celestial reaches, a notable advance toward imagining a procreative genesis cosmos.

We live in the epoch of explosive development of astrobiology, a novel interdisciplinary field dealing with the origin, evolution and the future of life. The relationship between cosmology and astrobiology is much deeper than it is usually assumed – besides a similarity in the historical model of development of these two disciplines, there is an increasing number of crossover problems and thematic areas which stem from considerations of Copernicanism and observation selection effects. Such a crossover area is both visualized and heuristically strengthened by introduction of the astrobiological landscape, describing complexity of life in the most general context. We argue that this abstract landscape-like structure in the space of astrobiological parameters is a concept capable of unifying different strands of thought and research, a working concept and not only a metaphor. By analogy with phase spaces of complex physical systems, we can understand the astrobiological landscape as a set of viable evolutionary histories of life in a particular region of space. It is a notion complementary to the classical concept of biological morphological space, underscoring the fact that modern astrobiology offers a prospect of both foundational support and vast extension of the domain of applicability of the Darwinian biological evolution. Such a perspective would strengthen foundations upon which various numerical models can be built; the lack of such quantitative models has often been cited as the chief weakness of the entire astrobiological enterprise. (Abstract)

Cmiel, Jessica, et al. Characterizing the Radiative-Convective Structure of Dense Rocky Planet Atmospheres.. arXiv:2505.00775. This 2025 entry by Harvard astroscientists describes extensive quantifications of the early Earth crustal ground to gaseous envelope environment. As these findings attest, they identify another still more Goldilocks just-right conditions for living systems to appear, survive, evolve and reach their present retrospect. See also A cool runaway greenhouse without surface magma ocean by Franck Selsis, et al in Nature (620/287, 2023).

We use a radiative-convective model to simulate hot, dense terrestrial-planet atmospheres. We find that strong shortwave absorption by H2O and CO2 inhibits near-surface convection, which reduces surface temperatures compared to convective predictions. We also show that greenhouse gases such as SO2 and NH3 have a limited warming effect. Our results highlight the role of shortwave heating on magma ocean planets and the need for improved high-temperature spectroscopy. (Excerpt).

Covone, Giovanni and Donato Giovannelli. Stellar Metallicity is a Key Parameter for the Search for Life in the Universe. arXiv:2207.03748. As if we needed another variable which effects life solar-planetary presence and evolution, University of Naples bioastronomers with postings at Woods Hole and Earth-Life Science Tokyo identify how proteins needs a certain supply of the proper metallic prompters. See also Mantle Mineralogy Limits to Rocky Planet Water Inventories by Clare Guimond, et al (2207.00014) and Minimum Units of Habitability and Their Abundance in the Universe by Charles Cockell, et al in Astrobiology (21/481, 2021), which is cited as a reference.

The search for Life in the Universe generally assumes three basic needs: vital elements (CHNOPS), a watery solvent for bio-reactions and a thermodynamic disequilibrium. The redox couples used by living systems involves thousands of reactions. Each has a midpoint redox potential due to oxidoreductases proteins which have metal catalytic centres. But these transition metals are not uniform across the cosmos, due to complex galaxy dynamics. Life's need for specific metals to access thermodynamic disequilibria has so far been overlooked with regard to astrobiological targets. Thus we argue that their relative availability is an essential feature of habitability, and a primary requisite in the exoplanetary search for life. (Abstract excerpt)

Cukier, Wolf, et al. Habitable Zone Boundaries for Circumbinary Planets. arXiv:1911.02983. Seven astrophysicists based in New York, Colorado and California including Jacob Haqq-Misra can now advise that double star formations are ubiquitous across the galaxy, which along with multiple star groups, make up at least half of all stellar placements. While life-bearing worlds can appear in this setting, it is not conducive over the long term for an evolution of human-like, sentient beings.

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